her wrinkled visage, and then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar the outlines of
her venerable figure. And Nurse Toothaker holds a teaspoon in her right hand
with which to stir up the contents of a tumbler in her left, whence steams a
vapory fragrance abhorred of temperance societies. Now she sips, now stirs, now
sips again. Her sad old heart has need to be revived by the rich infusion of
Geneva which is mixed half and half with hot water in the tumbler. All day long
she has been sitting by a death-pillow, and quitted it for her home only when the
spirit of her patient left the clay and went homeward too. But now are her
melancholy meditations cheered and her torpid blood warmed and her shoulders
lightened of at least twenty ponderous years by a draught from the true fountain
of youth in a case-bottle. It is strange that men should deem that fount a fable,
when its liquor fills more bottles than the Congress-water.—Sip it again, good
nurse, and see whether a second draught will not take off another score of years,
and perhaps ten more, and show us in your high-backed chair the blooming
damsel who plighted troths with Edward Fane.—Get you gone, Age and
Widowhood!—Come back, unwedded Youth!—But, alas! the charm will not
work. In spite of Fancy's most potent spell, I can see only an old dame cowering
over the fire, a picture of decay and desolation, while the November blast roars
at her in the chimney and fitful showers rush suddenly against the window.
Yet there was a time when Rose Grafton—such was the pretty maiden-name
of Nurse Toothaker—possessed beauty that would have gladdened this dim and
dismal chamber as with sunshine. It won for her the heart of Edward Fane, who
has since made so great a figure in the world and is now a grand old gentleman
with powdered hair and as gouty as a lord. These early lovers thought to have
walked hand in hand through life. They had wept together for Edward's little
sister Mary, whom Rose tended in her sickness—partly because she was the
sweetest child that ever lived or died, but more for love of him. She was but
three years old. Being such an infant, Death could not embody his terrors in her
little corpse; nor did Rose fear to touch the dead child's brow, though chill, as
she curled the silken hair around it, nor to take her tiny hand and clasp a flower
within its fingers. Afterward, when she looked through the pane of glass in the
coffin-lid and beheld Mary's face, it seemed not so much like death or life as like
a wax-work wrought into the perfect image of a child asleep and dreaming of its
mother's smile. Rose thought her too fair a thing to be hidden in the grave, and
wondered that an angel did not snatch up little Mary's coffin and bear the
slumbering babe to heaven and bid her wake immortal. But when the sods were
laid on little Mary, the heart of Rose was troubled. She shuddered at the fantasy
that in grasping the child's cold fingers her virgin hand had exchanged a first